Adventures in Kabylia

I went to Istanbul and came back It was awesome. Mosques, mosques, and more mosques, with some chips-covered-peanuts, ferry rides, hookah, and lots of shopping.

Now I'm in Kabylia, the Berber region of Algeria. I figured out how to switch the keyboard from AZERTY to QWERTY, and now I can finally do functional things on the internet, like update my blog for the first time in ages. Kabylia is amazing. It's better than anywhere else I've been. It's James Herriot's Yorkshire mixed with a greener Pamir Highway, snowy Kyrgyz mountain peaks, rolling hills of Austria, and Bulgarian mountain villages. There are palm trees, donkeys, wild monkeys, lots of outdoor markets, and beautiful views everywhere you look. I wish I never had to leave! When I get back to the US where I'll have more reliable high-speed internet, I will add many pictures of this wonderful place.

Wishing for Istanbul

Today is October 4, and there are 47 days until I leave for Istanbul. There is nothing I want more than to skip straight to November 20 and be in Turkey already. Now that fall is here, wanderlust has struck heavily again and I would much rather be living abroad somewhere than being here in Minnesota. Istanbul is never far from my thoughts - last week when flipping through a new Turkey guidebook, I was brought to tears by the thought of being there again (Mosques! Lagman! Hookah! Elma çay! Isik Cikmazi 26! Ortaköy! Adhan! Cheap clothes!). Then, I found a wonderful poem by Turkish poet Yahya Kemal Beyatli about Istanbul that made me miss it even more:

BİR BAŞKA TEPEDEN

  Sana dün bir tepeden baktım aziz İstanbul!

  Görmedim gezmediğim, sevmediğim hiçbir yer.

  Ömrüm oldukça, gönül tahtıma keyfince kurul!

  Sade bir semtini sevmek bile bir ömre değer.

  Nice revnaklı şehirler görülür dünyada,

  Lakin efsunlu güzellikleri sensin yaratan.

  Yaşamıştır derim, en hoş ve uzun rü'yada

  Sende çok yıl yaşayan, sende ölen, sende yatan.

English translation:

I looked at you from another hill, dear Istanbul!


I know you like back of my hand, and love you dearly.


Come, come and sit on my heart's throne as long as I live


Just to love a district of yours is worth a whole life.



There are many flourishing cities in the world.


But you're the only one who creates enchanting beauty.


I say, he who has lived happily, in the longest dream,


Is he who spent his life in you, died in you, and was buried in you.

My friends just moved back into my old apartment, a friend from Kyrgyzstan is currently living in Istanbul, and I've been planning a meetup with a Bulgarian friend, so there are reunions in Istanbul to look forward to as well. I'm also hoping to take day trips to Edirne and Pamukkle, places in Turkey I haven't been before.

It's been a while since I've been looking forward to the future rather than living in the moment, but the next months are going to be just that. It will be interesting to see if I love Istanbul as much in reality as I have this past year in memory and nostalgia. If so, I will definitely try to convince Aissa that he wants to live there so that we can move.

Changes in Beyoğlu

In Istanbul, I lived in the district of Beyoğlu. This is often known as the heart of European Istanbul, with tons of bars, outdoor cafes, shops and flocks of tourists. I lived very near to the 'dangerous' neighborhood of Tarlabaşı. Turks were often shocked to find out where I lived, because this is where the prostitutes, gypsies and transvestites lived, and therefore a place I shouldn't go. However, it was one of my favorite places in Istanbul. Its narrow streets were full of food sellers, beautiful decrepit buildings, women shouting to each other out the windows and kids playing soccer. During Ramadan, my neighborhood was one of the few that still had a man walk around drumming at 3 am, waking people up for pre-dawn breakfast. I took many wandering walks through the congested streets and never got tired of the sights. There was always something new to see - a woman walking a lamb on a leash, soccer fans waving scarves and singing team songs, women dumping dishwater out the windows and men praying in the corner of their convenience stores and women lowering baskets out their window to buy vegetables from street salesmen. Here is how wikipedia describes it: 

Historically, Tarlabaşı was home to a large Greek population; the neighbourhood's most prominent building is still a Greek Orthodox church from the 19th century. The city's oldest and largest Syriac Orthodox church is also found here. In the 1990s, large numbers of Kurdish immigrants from eastern Turkey moved into Tarlabaşı mixing in with the local Roma population. More recently, it has become the home to many migrants from neighbouring countries and Africa.

I was much happier living in a neighborhood like this than I would have been in one of the bohemian areas full of expats, international grocery stores and trendy restaurants. Now, following recent elections, government officials are working to beautify the city (an urban renewal project) and are evicting the poorer people from Tarlabaşı.


EurasiaNet has a few great articles on the subject: here, here and most recently here. This is a great blog in English about happenings in the neighborhood.  It will be a real loss to Turkish culture if Tarlabaşı's traditional buildings are torn down. There are enough places in Istanbul that are modern and Western. Officials should be working to preserve these old neighborhoods rather than destroying them.


In other sad Istanbul news, officials have been shutting down all outdoor seating in restaurants in bars. Istanbul Eats looks at how this has affected these locales here. One of the best parts about Istanbul in warm weather was the number of places with outdoor seating. The alleys off of İstiklal got narrower with tables, the Turkish men enticing you into their restaurant appeared more than ever and there was a wonderful atmosphere that filled these lively streets. The energy was infectious and I could have spent every night walking up and down these streets, people watching. It will not be the same if everyone sits inside. Will the Beyoğlu I see in November be the same one I fell in love with two years ago?

Language Learning

I have not blogged nearly as much as I would have liked. I went to San Francisco in December and Thailand and Cambodia in June, but just have felt writer's block for so many months.

I haven't traveled as much as I would like, but I have been taking lots of language classes. Since last fall, I've taken Polish, Mandarin, French, Russian and Turkish classes, and one thing is clear. Whether it's innate ability or as a result of studying linguistics, many foreign languages and TESL, I am a great language learner. Things just make sense to me that are difficult to others.

I have been taking community language classes, which are cheap, and so my classmates come from all walks of life. In Polish class, many had Polish ancestors and wanted to connect with their roots. French class was full of retirees who wanted to move to France. Turkish class is a good mix - one girl is taking it because she loves the Turkish restaurant in St. Paul, and a couple is learning Turkish so that they can communicate with their daughter's Turkish in-laws. Whoever they are, most have had no foreign language experience. When genders were introduced in Polish class, one man spent weeks and weeks questioning this since, "How can a chair be a man? Why is coffee a girl?" Turkish is a pronoun-optional language, but one woman asks EVERY time if, for example, "ben yorgunum" means the same thing as "yorgunum." YES, YES, YES! Every time, yes.

It makes it very frustrating for me since classes progresses at the speed of molasses in January. It also means that my classmates turn to me for help, but also secretly resent me. I'm sure they wonder why I'm in beginning Turkish when I seem to know it all. However, it's all new to me, it just happens to make perfect sense. Turkish is the most logical language I've studied, and it boggles my mind that others don't find it as easy as I do.

One would hope that university language classes, which cost about $4000 for a semester, have higher expectations of the students than the cheaper community classes ($50-$100 for 6-8 weeks). However, unless the class if full of linguists and serial language learners, I fear the same frustration would be there, only my bank account would be emptier. Private lessons would be the way to go, but they are more expensive and I need other students to motivate me to do homework. So, I guess I'll continue doing what I'm doing. It is definitely a good practice in patience, something I'll need in teaching EFL. If only "excellent language learning ability" was a real resume builder, and if only serial language learning was a real job I could get.